The Greatest Story
by arielx
Summary: An outsider ponders Draco and Hermione's secret relationshp, and tries to come to terms with her own grief. One Shot.


**The Greatest Story**

Sometimes looking at them makes me feel very lonely.  Like perhaps I'm missing something very important in my life, and they have it and parade about me with it.

But then I look closely, and see that perhaps I'm the lucky one.  I have no terrible secrets that keep me up at night, that make me afraid to confide in my friends.  I am not having secret trysts by the lake with my forbidden lover.  I do not conceal a secret misery from the ones that love me most.  My life is far simpler than Hermione's and Draco's.

I watch them now, down by the lake.  They're holding on to one another like they cannot stand alone.  I myself am cloaked by the shadow the castle gives.  I don't know why I've taken to watching them like this.  Maybe I'm a romantic, under the sharp wit and perpetually wet cheeks.

I am no fool.   Hardly, what Ravenclaw is?  I know their relationship did not stem from childish innocence.  I would watch them as I conducted the prefect meetings; the venomous looks that they shot one another from across the table soon turned into lust, and soon they gave in, giving each other everything they had.  And they hadn't looked back.

It's begun to rain.  The harsh smatterings of rain roared up so quickly I was startled from my secluded spot.  But only for a moment.  They were still holding onto one another.  I wonder if they even know that they are getting soaked.  They'll most likely catch pneumonia now.  Maybe it always feels like it's raining for them.  Maybe the sky always opens up and crashes down when they are together.  Maybe the earth spins backwards on its axis during their time. 

Or perhaps the world stays just how it is, and that's the thing they want to forget the most.

I see the fear in Hermione's eyes when her friends pick a fight with her secret lover.  I would watch in almost morbid amusement as Draco's cronies taunted her and called her wicked, wicked names.  I'm the one on the outside looking in, remember?  I can enjoy both sides of the story from all angles. 

Their friends would never accept it.  Perhaps they themselves don't as well.  No one even notices the looks they give one another across the Great Hall at meals.  I sometimes wonder why I even noticed, if those closest to them never had. 

But then again, maybe they had noticed, and it was easier to ignore it.  Hermione and Draco are not the easy black and white, they are a million shades of beautiful and enveloping grey, and not many others can handle that.

The rain has stopped more suddenly than it had begun.  The clouds drifted apart in such a peculiar way, letting the moon and the stars shine through.  I wonder for a moment whether there was some other sort of magic going on, controlling the weather in this moment.  That's ridiculous though; no one has the power to control the weather.

 I will graduate soon, in less than a couple weeks, and then Hermione will take my place as head girl.  Will Draco become the head boy?  Perhaps.  Perhaps fate will smile and give them another excuse to hold on to one another, before being thrown into a world outside Hogwarts that will force Draco to kill the only one who ever loved him, and will force Hermione to betray her first love.  Sometimes I pray that it never comes to this, and other times I feel I would be pacified in my own misery, my own first lover taken abruptly from me, without a warning.  They, at least, know the stakes at which they are gambling with, I went into love as a carefree fifth year, excited and intoxicated by the feelings and sensations that I believed only Cedric could instill in me.  Do they feel like that for one another?  Perhaps.  But their game is far too dangerous, too doomed and too tragic to survive.

And yet, they are.

Love is something you either believe in or you don't.  It's a feeling that boils inside and connects itself like a parasite to every one of your vital feelings.  Passion.  Lust.  Desire.  Jealousy.  Need.  Hunger.  Rage.

I sometimes think that they are the greatest story.  The epitome of an epic Shakespearian love tragedy.

It is a tragedy, really.

The world will never know the greatest love story ever told.

And now I'll walk back to the Ravenclaw tower and lie in my warm bed, the feeling of abandonment cloaking me from everyone around me.  And then they will walk back to their houses, the feeling of unrest dividing them from the rest of the world.


End file.
